March 8, 2009

Few would say the church exists for the benefit of its members alone. No pastor I know would claim the title "purveyor of religious goods and services to a discriminating spiritual clientele." But pastors know what happens when they ask members to sacrifice personal tastes or preferences for the sake of mission. (Often they become ex-pastors!)

The emerging church is raising these deeper questions and proposing that the church exists to be a catalyst for the kingdom of God as a transforming force in the world. This doesn't minimize worship, evangelism, or making disciples; it puts those elements within their grand purpose.

Jesus is looking for greathearted people. The world has plenty of intellect, but God wants something better. He wants expanded, boundless hearts in which He can dwell and from which He can bless the universe. God will give you as much as you are able to love. -A. B. Simpson

VISION Dr. Wernher von Braun once spoke these comforting words, “Science . . . tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace . . . Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. Now, if God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn’t it make sense to assume that He applies it also to the masterpiece of His creation the human soul? And everything science has taught me and continues to teach me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.”

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." -- Audre Lorde

"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world." -- Joel A. Barker

"The process of succeeding can be seen as a series of trials in which your vision constantly guides you toward your target while in your actual performance you are regularly slightly off target. Success in any area requires constantly readjusting your behavior as the result of feedback from your experience." -- Michael Gelb & Tony Buzan

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” -- Carl Jung

The average size of a church in the U.S. now is 40 people.

"It is in the desert of Sinai that you find the mountain of God." --

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." -- Paul Boese

"Forgiveness doesn't make the other person right, it makes you free." -- Stormie Omartian

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." -- Kahlil Gibran


"Money-giving is a good criterion of a person's mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people." -- Dr. Karl Menninger

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another." -- Walter Elliott

A soapmaker who challenged a rabbi: "What good is religion? It teaches honesty, but most people are dishonest."
The rabbi answered, "My dear soapmaker, religion--like soap--only works when you use it."

"It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action."

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby

"One person with passion is better than forty who are merely interested." -- Thomas K. Connellan

At the feast of ego everyone leaves hungry.
EGO = Edging God Out

The Fork in the Road According to that great font of wisdom, Yogi Berra, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." Mark 8 is a kind of theological fork in the road. This chapter is the hinge of Mark's gospel. Not only is this the exact middle of Mark in terms of chapters and verses, it is also theologically the center point at which the ministry of Jesus takes a decisive turn toward the cross. Jesus seems to know what he is doing and also where he is going (or, better said, where he must go whether he wants to go that direction or not). For the disciples, however, Mark 8 does present a kind of fork in the road. And like Yogi Berra, as they look at the fork in the road, they want to take it. They want it both ways. They want to stick with Jesus and be his followers while at the same time insisting that Jesus follow them down the path they want to take.
Billy Graham poses the question this way: "When Jesus said, ‘if you are going to follow me, you have to take up a cross,’ it was the same as saying, ‘Come and bring your electric chair with you. Take up the gas chamber and follow me.’ He did not have a beautiful gold cross in mind - the cross on a church steeple or on the front of your Bible. Jesus had in mind a place of execution."

One half our problems come from wanting our own way. The other half come from getting it!

Peter Doesn't Misunderstand
V. 32a is found only in Mark: "and he was speaking the word plainly." When Peter takes Jesus aside and "rebukes" him, it is not because Peter misunderstands Jesus' words, but because he does understand them, and he doesn't like them.
To quote that great theologian Mark Twain: "Many people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand."

A little boy who was just learning about addition and subtraction in school looked up during Worship one Sunday, saw the cross sitting on the altar and hollered, "Look, Daddy! There's a plus sign in our Church."
The cross really is a plus sign in our Church. It's a plus sign in our lives daily. It tells us of the advantages of being a Christian and accepting the forgiveness God offers through the cross. Through the cross God did what only God can do. God transformed a horrible instrument of torture and death into a symbol of life and hope. God transformed tragedy into triumph; humiliation into glory; despair into hope. God took what was ugly and cruel and violent and transformed it into a thing of beauty and a symbol of peace.


One of the most dramatic and world-renowned shifts from "I" to God is the conversion of C. S. Lewis. This little man, who held the chair of medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, sat in his study without typewriter or secretary and penned the great masterpieces which made him perhaps the most broadly-read Christian writer of our century. C. S. Lewis was an agnostic, but was Surprised By Joy--the title of a book in which he tells about "The Shape of My Early Life" as Christ replaced the "I" in his life.
C. S. Lewis describes the exchange between self-will and God's will in Beyond Personality (and his words are a challenge to you and to me): "Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your money and so much of your work--I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self instead. In fact I will give you myself, my own will shall become yours.

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it." -- Rene Descartes

"Every artist was first an amateur." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is not love, but lack of love, which is blind." -- Glenway Wescott

"We are safer in the storm God sends us than in a calm when we are befriended by the world." -- Jeremy Taylor

"Our aspirations are our possibilities." -- Robert Browning

"When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place." -- C. S. Lewis

Give Thanks "Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity;
for pain that teaches you courage--
and give exceeding thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery
still--the veil that hides you from the infinite,
which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see."
-- Robert Nathan


Can you guess which of the following are TRUE and which are FALSE?
1. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
4. People do not get sick from cold weather; it's from being indoors a lot more.
5. When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even your heart!
6. Only 7 per cent of the population are lefties.
7. Forty people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.
8. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until they are 2-6 years old.
9. The average person over 50 will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
10. The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
11. The average housefly lives for one month.
12. 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.
13. A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.
14. The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute.
15. Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than any other time of day.
16. Most of us have eaten a spider in our sleep.
17. The REAL reason ostriches stick their head in the sand is to search for water.
18. The only two animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.
19. John Travolta turned down the starring roles in "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "Tootsie".
21. In most television commercials advertising milk, a mixture of white paint and a little thinner is used in place of the milk
22. Prince Charles and Prince William NEVER travel on the same airplane, just in case there is a crash.
23. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used a tomato can for a carburetor.
25. Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana. They were 7th cousins.
26. If coloring weren't added to Coca-Cola, it would be green.
They are all true.

"It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing." -- Mother Teresa